A short story (fiction) published in Daily Express Saturday Magazine and Sunday People magazine.

A tapping on the bedroom window stirred Carol, gradually coaxing her awake.

Turning slowly, she looked at the male blackbird who cocked his head, staring at her. He blinked his orange rimmed eyes and tapped again.

‘Alright, I’m coming.’ Carol sighed, muttering, ‘That bird! What is he expecting? Silver service?’

In her dressing gown and slippers, she shuffled down the corridor of the bungalow she’d lived in for sixteen years with her husband, the last year, alone.

She opened the bag of peanuts, not for her, but for the blackbird. For seventy eight years she had never noticed the birds in her garden. Now feeding the blackbird was how she began every day.

Standing on the patio, she stretched her arm out and uncupped her hand, full of peanuts.

‘Come on then.’ Carol said to the blackbird who had rushed into the bushes. ‘Don’t leave me waiting young man.’

The blackbird hopped from the shadows and flew to the low stone wall. His feathers were sleek, his eyes inky. In one graceful movement, he flew directly to her hand, took a peanut and landed on the ground nearby. Holding the peanut in his bright orange beak, he tossed his head back, opened his beak and swallowed the peanut whole. Carol loved watching the blackbird do this. The movement reminded her of her late husband who always ate peanuts just the same – head back, tossing them in the air before swallowing, down in one.

She shifted her feet, looking down as she thought of him. She had got used to the numb ache of loss but her ears still listened out for him asking whether she wanted a second cup of tea. Her body still anticipated him coming up behind her and putting his arm around her shoulders. If it wasn’t for the blackbird she would feel alone. Yes, she had family and friends, but the mornings felt so quiet, so empty. Those first moments of waking up had always been shared.

She had discovered the blackbird at her lowest. Not directly after her husband died when her days were filled with well wishes and funeral arrangements but when the phone stopped ringing. When everyone else moved on. Then the silence felt louder as time distanced her from him. The bungalow felt huge, the rooms empty of her husband and their marriage that had vanished with him. So she had gone outside, to perch on the low wall, looking back at her past. Until the blackbird broke the silence.

Out he came one morning, hopping along in the dappled shade under the bushes. Head down, eyes fixated, the blackbird moved busily around in the fallen leaves. Normally her husband cleared them but they had laid there all winter and now in spring, looked like a brown carpet. Shuffling through the leaves quickly with both feet, the blackbird darted after insects, spending hours rootling around. Carol’s eyes widened as she watched him. He was always busy. He pulled worms out of the soil, heaving. Stepping backwards, the blackbird carried on pulling before ‘pop’, out the worm came and down the worm went, gobbled up.

Carol began to notice other birds: blue tits in the apple tree and the robin who sang with his head tilted towards the sky. Within her small garden, she found companions she didn’t have to put a brave face on for. She could just be, without well intentioned questions or sympathetic looks.

Sometimes she would sit there with the newspaper while the blackbird foraged, hopping right past her slippers. One Saturday she read an article about a game called ‘first bird of my day’ where someone had started posting on social media the name of whatever bird they saw first in the morning for other people to share their first bird. She began to play it too, realising it made her notice, made her look forward to each morning. To start with her first bird had been varied. There was a pair of collared doves who roosted in the boundary hedge; a wood pigeon who cooed on the telephone wire; jackdaws on the roof. But as she spent more time in the garden, it was the male blackbird who was always there first. She began muttering to him about all sorts of things, reminding herself to add peanuts to her shopping list.

‘I’ll have to think of a name for you.’ She said as he landed at her feet.

About two months before, one frosty morning, Carol had watched the blackbird hopping along the flowerbed but the soil was frozen solid. Knowing he wouldn’t be able to get to the worms, she had scattered bird seed along the low wall. Having some of her husband’s peanuts still, she had added them to the mix. The blackbird had come straight away. Hopping along cautiously to start with, within a week, he had become less wary. Within a fortnight, actively picky. Within a month, darn right spoilt. He stopped even looking at the seed, eating only the peanuts. That’s when Carol had decided to try hand feeding. She had the time. She had learned that time spent with the blackbird stopped her from thinking about other things. She didn’t think about the past with her husband or the present without him. Most of all she didn’t worry about her future. The blackbird kept her in the moment, pulling her attention to him, to his satisfaction of eating the peanuts. At some point he had started anticipating his breakfast, tapping on the window. It had made her laugh, reminding her of her husband who had often looked at her with hopeful eyes at the thought of a cup of tea. Like the blackbird, he had been the silent but sure type. Someone who knew his own mind but a man of few words.

‘Fine,’ Carol said. ‘I’ll call you Bert, after him,’ smiling as the blackbird took another peanut. Head back, tossing it up, swallowing, down in one.

Hannah Bourne-Taylor, author of Fledgling